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A fascinating new survey of the Caucasus which provides a unified narrative history of this complex and turbulent region at the borderlands of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, from prehistory to the present. For thousands of years the Caucasus has formed a hub of intersecting routes of migration, invasion, trade and culture and a geographical bridge between Europe and Asia, subject to recurring imperial invasion. Drawing on sources in English, Russian and translations from Persian and Arabic, this authoritative study centres on the region's indigenous peoples, including Abkhazians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Daghestanis, Circassians, and Georgians, and their relations with outsiders who still play a part in the life of the region today.

Ethnology --- Anthropologie sociale et culturelle --- History --- Histoire --- Caucasus --- Middle East --- Russia --- Soviet Union --- Caucase --- Moyen-Orient --- Russie --- URSS --- History. --- Relations --- Politics and government --- Ethnology - Caucasus - History --- Caucasus - History --- Caucasus - Politics and government --- Caucasus - Relations - Middle East --- Middle East - Relations - Caucasus --- Caucasus - Relations - Russia --- Soviet Union - Relations - Caucasus --- Caucasus - Relations - Soviet Union

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This is the first book to provide a synthesising study of Russian writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of empire-building. From Pushkin's ambivalent portrayal of an alpine Circassia to Tolstoy's condemnation of tsarist aggression against Muslim tribes in Hadji Murat, the literary analysis is firmly set in its historical context, and the responses of the Russian readership too receive extensive attention. As well as exploring literature as such, this study introduces material from travelogues, oriental studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist officials and military commanders. While showing how literature often underwrote imperialism, the book carefully explores the tensions between the Russian state's ideology of a European mission to civilise the Muslim mountaineers, and romantic perceptions of those tribes as noble primitives whose extermination was no cause for celebration. By dealing with imperialism in Georgia as well, the study shows how the varied treatment of the Caucasus in literature helped Russians construct a satisfying identity for themselves as a semi-European, semi-Asian people.

Orient dans la littérature --- Orient in literature --- Oriënt in de literatuur --- Romanticism --- Russian literature --- History and criticism. --- 19th century --- History and criticism --- Russia --- Relations --- Caucasus --- Caucasus - In literature. --- Orient - In literature. --- Russia - Relations - Caucasus. --- Caucasus - Relations - Russia. --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- Orient --- In literature. --- Caucasia --- Caucasus Mountains --- Caucasus Region --- Kavkaz --- Russie --- Rossīi︠a︡ --- Rossīĭskai︠a︡ Imperīi︠a︡ --- Russia (Provisional government, 1917) --- Russia (Vremennoe pravitelʹstvo, 1917) --- Russland --- Ṛusastan --- Russia (Tymchasovyĭ uri︠a︡d, 1917) --- Russian Empire --- Rosja --- Russian S.F.S.R. --- Russia (Territory under White armies, 1918-1920)